Manufacturers may choose to track batches during a production process for several reasons. Typically, these reasons involve a need or desire to be able to trace the ingredients or components that have been used in a shipped product, or to be able to trace the product(s) made from a specific ingredient or component. A need for traceability may be imposed by legal requirements, for example in the pharmaceutical industry where drugs can be made up of several different chemicals or compositions. Another example is customer demands: someone purchasing a composite product may insist that its constituent parts or ingredients be traceable. Yet another example is that a manufacturer may itself impose a quality requirement on its operations to ensure reliable products and to protect its goodwill.
One existing system that provides this kind of traceability is known as “Inventory Management” and is available from SAP AG in Walldorf (Baden), Germany. This system tracks batch number(s) of materials that are used in manufacturing a product. It is therefore suitable for the manufacture of pharmaceutical products, for example. Particularly, it provides a “where-used” list for batches, which list facilitates tracing for purposes of recalling products and other reasons. That is, the actions taken with regard to a material batch are tracked and associated with its particular batch number.
This system and other existing solutions may however be associated with problems. The rigorous tracking of batch numbers for every action taken with regard to the material may not be necessary (from a legal standpoint) or even desirable (from a cost perspective) in other implementations. Particularly, managing the material stock in batches requires substantial information processing and data entry by users. Car makers and food producers, to name just two examples, may want to ensure traceability in their respective manufacturing processes without this complexity. Such producers have therefore been reluctant to adopt the above described inventory management solution.